FOR PETE'S SAKE

A Message From Jules Winnfield

Pete.

Pete, look at my face.

I need you to understand something before we go any further because I have looked into the eyes of men who were about to die — sat right across from them, had full conversations — and not one of those poor, sorry, doomed motherfuckers ever did anything as breathtakingly, catastrophically, historically stupid as the shit you just pulled.

And one of those motherfuckers hid drugs in his dead buddy’s apartment.

You stole my shit, Pete.

Not God’s shit. Not Ezekiel’s shit. Not the shit of any prophet, apostle, or otherwise divinely-inspired author of any motherfuckin’ holy text. My shit. The words I say right before I shoot a motherfucker to death over a briefcase whose contents are never explained — that is the sacred text you chose for your flock.

You built a whole motherfuckin’ church inside the Pentagon. And you filled it with my monologue. And not one motherfucker in that room — not one general, not one admiral, not one person with a combined century of military service between them — raised their hand and said:

Hold on. I’ve seen this movie.

“You will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

That’s the line. You know that motherfuckin’ line.

And you changed it from the Lord to Sandy One.

Sit with what you did for just one motherfuckin’ second.

You took God. The Alpha and the Omega. The I Am That I Am. The Being who parted the Red Sea and spoke to Moses from a burning motherfuckin’ bush — the central figure of the religion you been using as Pentagon interior decorating — and you bumped His ass.

You bumped God, motherfucker.

For a call sign.

The Lord thy God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, replaced in your scripture by Sandy Goddamn One.

I want you to think about what you asked those generals to pray toward. You said bow your heads. You said pray with me.

Sandy One is not God, Pete.

Sandy One is a call sign for a motherfuckin’ pilot of a motherfuckin’ plane.

I know exactly what happened, Pete.

Somebody handed you that prayer and something lit up in your Fox-News-marinating brain. Fire. Thunder. Sacred motherfuckin’ violence. All that righteous-vengeance energy you been trying to bottle since you walked into the Pentagon and decided it needed more Jesus. Those words felt like God talking. I know they did, because I said them to feel exactly like that — I said those words to make a motherfucker feel like the hand of the Almighty just entered the room.

So you picked it up.

You didn’t Google it. You didn’t call a chaplain. You didn’t ask one single solitary motherfucker whether those words had any connection to the religion you claim to represent.

You just carried that shit to the altar.

Do you understand what it means, Pete?

Have you thought about it for one motherfuckin’ second?

I walked away from the life. Put down the gun. Saw something in that apartment I cannot fully explain — Vincent didn’t believe me, Vincent is dead now so Vincent don’t get a vote — but I saw something, and I walked away, and I have been tryin’. Tryin’ real hard to be the shepherd.

I’m a mushroom-cloud-layin’ motherfucker, Pete.

And I have never — not once, not for one single motherfuckin’ second — stood in front of a congregation and handed those people a hitman’s pre-murder monologue and called it the Word of God.

That’s all you, Pete.

That accomplishment belongs entirely to your ass.

“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides.”

Yeah, Pete.

Beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men and by a Secretary of War who cannot tell the Bible from a Miramax production, who built a church inside the motherfuckin’ Pentagon and filled it with my material, who bumped God Almighty for a call sign.

From now on, keep my motherfuckin’ words out of your motherfuckin’ mouth.

Don't test me, motherfucker.

Don't even fuckin’ think about it.

Sleep tight, Pete.

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Jules Winnfield is a fictional character created by Quentin Tarantino and portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson, neither of whom have officially endorsed this message. Pete Hegseth is, unfortunately, not fictional.